EXPIRES: 2000

WRITTEN: 1900-12

Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence, snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later.

John Elfreth Watkins Jr.

"What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years," The Ladies' Home Journal, December 1900

Written: 1900-12

Addressed to: by the year 2000

Source: "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years

Author: John Elfreth Watkins Jr.

Category: Technology

Annotation

This prediction is strikingly close to the reality of digital photojournalism and wire services by 2000, and even more accurate as a description of the smartphone-era information ecosystem. The specific reference to a battle in China being reported in near-real-time reads as almost uncanny.

What Actually Happened

By 2000, digital photography and satellite transmission made real-time photo transmission routine. By 2010, citizen smartphone footage surpassed this prediction.

#photography#telecommunications#journalism#victorian#prescience

2035

When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance.

Nikola Tesla

1980

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, 'memex' will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.

Vannevar Bush

1975

It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.

Lewis L. Strauss